🛡️ SponsorBlock
Many use AdBlocker to block youtube Ads, but Nobody can block Sponsor Ads as they are a part of the Youtube Video
SponsorBlock is an open-source crowdsourced browser extension to skip sponsor segments in YouTube videos. Users submit when a sponsor happens from the extension, and the extension automatically skips sponsors it knows about. It also supports skipping other categories, such as intros, outros, and reminders to subscribe.
There are currently 63,600 users who have submitted 229,229 skip segments, which have saved a total of 11 years and 205.28 days of people’s lives.
đź“‚ Project Repository
Browser Extension - SponsorBlock
Server Side - SponsorBlockServer
đź“Ą Downloads
![]()
Edge - https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Edge
Opera - https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Opera
Android - https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Android
Sponser Block - sponsor.ajay.app
Server Status - status.sponsor.ajay.app
âť“ How it works
When you visit a YouTube video, it will check the database to see if anyone has made any submissions for the video. If so, the segment will automatically get skipped when you reach it.
The notice notification
Once the sponsorship is skipped, you can upvote or downvote this segment and it will be recorded in the database.
Instead of just sending the top reported segment, it will looks for all the overlapping segments. Only one of each group of overlapping segments will be sent to the user.
Pseudo-random distribution
To prevent one submission with a lot of votes never being able to be replaced, I decided to use a weighted random distribution based on the equation on the right.
Square root functionThis formula makes small amount of votes (under 10), matter a lot, and makes the really large votes slowly not matter as much. This makes a newly submitted sponsor time always possible to be sent out to users to get votes. So, most users will get the best submission, but some users will get lesser votes submissions so that they can either be upvoted or downvoted. Submissions with less than -1 votes are ignored entirely.
Submissions
Anyone can submit segments, either by clicking on the button that is added to the YouTube player or by opening the extensions popup. The button in the YouTube player can be hidden. You click once to indicate the start of a segment, then click again to indicate the end. You can submit as many segments as there are in the video. Make sure to choose the correct category for each segment.
What data is stored?
🗄️ Log Files
Almost all data that is collected through this extension can be downloaded from SponserBlock_Database. Some more sensitive data such as votes and hashed IPs are stored in a private database.
The only things SponserBlock keeps are:
- Information you submit (segments, votes)
- A hashed version of your userID (a randomly generated value assigned when you first install the extension)
- The time the submission happened
- A hashed + salted version of your IP address. My server can check if the same IP is posting too many things. No hacker or anyone who downloads the database file from the above link should be able to get any personal info. The IP is hashed (one-way function) which makes a hacker have to use brute-force if they want to determine the IP of a transaction and make it impossible if they don’t have access to the salt.
The extension also optionally logs whenever you skip a segment. This is used to let other users know how much their submissions have helped others (leaderboard). The skip tracking is completely anonymous and can be disabled in settings.
⬆️ Requests sent to the server
Each time you browse to a new YouTube video:
- A request to there server is sent asking for segments for that video.
- This request contains no personally identifiable information and no IPs are logged from this request.
Each time you skip a segment: If you have skip tracking enabled:
- An anonymous request is sent with the ID of the sponsor to record one skip
- No IPs are logged from this request.
Each time you vote on a submission:
- A request with your userID and the segment ID is sent
Each time you submit a segment
- A request with the video ID, your user ID, and the submission is sent
🧒 Children’s Information
Children under 13 are not allowed to use this service.
